Directions: 1. Wash the rice, and place it with water or dashi, soya sauce, sake, mirin, chopped carrot and chopped mushrooms into heavy-bottomed pot.2. Cover the pot, and heat it over strong heat. After the pot starts to release steam, lower the flame (as low as you can), wait 15min. turn up the heat again for 30secs and then turn off. Wait 10mins without opening the pot. 3. Open the pot, mix gently and EAT!

Sometimes I feel like I want to eat takikomi rice until I die. But in the Scotland, I don't have rice cooker, so I used a pot. Of course, it was better than using a rice cooker!"Takikomi" rice is a famous Japanese home food and also one way to get away from boring everyday white rice. It's like seasoned boiled rice.

For white rice, we should place rice into water and wait some hours to make it softer, but it will be harder if we do it for "takikomi" rice because of salt. So be careful!

You should use the heaviest pot to cook rice in this way. I'm using "LE CREUSET" which is not mine… This kind of cast iron pot is the best choice to simmer something on low heat!

Vegan Memo:- Of course, you can use other vegetables. Root vegetables such as bamboo roots, lotus root, and burdock are all great if you can find them. Pumpkin and butternut squash are also good for takikomi rice.- The last 30 sec of cooking is to make "okoge" which are the burned bits. It's the best bit of rice cooked in a pot, so please try it.- You should not open the pan when you are cooking. It's a Japanese secret!- The flavor improves with time so if you can wait, it will be more delicious.- This time, I used rice called "sushi rice" which I got from Chinese supermarket.

Directions: 1. Heat margarine in a heavy bottom pot, add sliced onion and chopped carrot, fry well. After it starts to brown, add sliced mushrooms, broccoli and flour, fry and stir until vegetables are evenly coated and flour is no longer powdery. 2. Add soya milk, vegetable stock and miso, and stop cooking before the mixture starts to boil. Add salt and pepper to taste.3. Grease the oven dish with olive oil, cut a clove of garlic in half, rub the cut side of the garlic on the oven dish. Place boiled pasta, white sauce, vegan cheese and bread crumbs into the oven dish (in that order), bake until bread crumbs are brown (around 20min in 200 degrees). Place parsley on top of gratin and eat!

Kids like it. Adults like it. It's creamy gratin! For this vegan cream sauce, the sweetness of well cooked onion and the richness of the miso is important. Of course, you can use this recipe for stew, doria (gratin using rice) and so on, and also you can use potatoes, asparagus… or anything instead of pasta, I think.Gratin is not so complicated and it is easy to make a side dish when you are baking it. So I want people who don't usually cook to challenge themselves and try this recipe.

Vegan Memo:- If you can't get vegan cheese, you don't need to use it.- If your vegan cheese is able to melt, you can put it on top of gratin. If your vegan chess is not able to melt, you should add it in the white sauce. Otherwise it will be dried crispy vegan cheese!- You should try it with hot sauce. It's super delicious!